Eric Burncastle and his beloved Fenella Cooper are looking forward to a relaxing weekend at London's elegant Laurel Hotel-a writers' retreat focused on gothic horror should be the perfect getaway for two aspiring authors. What they don't expect is to find themselves sharing the premises with SCOFFS (Society for Countering Outlandish Falsehoods and Fantastical Speculation), a group of militant sceptics led by Eric's old nemesis, Geoffrey de la Plume.
When mysterious vintage photographs appear in the hotel lobby-featuring uncanny resemblances to both writers and sceptics-the weekend takes a decidedly sinister turn. The hotel's Art Deco elegance begins shifting and warping, revealing glimpses of its 1920s past. Guests start disappearing. Time itself seems unstuck.
As Eric finds himself trapped in a spectral echo of the hotel's golden age, Fenella must navigate a world where reality bends like clockwork. With the help of an eccentric Volkswagen enthusiast named Dave Amberleaf and a diminutive Southern psychic, she races to uncover the dark secret behind the hotel's temporal distortions.
But some mysteries have been waiting nearly a century for resolution, and the entity controlling the Laurel Hotel has no intention of letting its prisoners escape. Between pompous sceptics, vengeful spirits, and the ticking of sinister timepieces, Eric and Fenella face their most supernatural challenge yet.
This book is the third in The Chronicles of Eric Burncastle Series.